Unwrapping Lithium
UNWRAPPING LITHIUM. Sunken Harsh realities lie in wait beneath heavy blankets of sleep. Paralysed limbs that know the pain of a wounded past will soon face the onslaught of another vicious day. She stirs. A euphoric sun slays shadows as awakening eyes slay dreams. She never got the joke because she was the punch… line. Pretty girls make victims she thinks as she slips into clothes that will bury her perfection. Knots in her stomach are loosened one by one as she feeds her depression on lithium. She never quite manages to undo them fully. She is a teenage tourniquet, pulling ever tighter on my troubled heart. And I love her. Soft leather sofas, the colour of death, provide false comfort as hateful memories are dragged from her prison mind. Yet still they persist with their inane questions. Textbook psychologists with textbook tones and smiles pull thoughts as if extracting teeth. She can only lower her guard in the safety of empty rooms. She can only lower eyelids in the presence of dreams. She will leave with a smile that she had prepared earlier from the remnants of other people’s contentment. She will discard such tyranny without a thought as she leaves empty hearted and desolately low. Inane wolf-whistles from sex starved cretins with beer bellies and brutal laughs fly over her head as she waits impatiently for a bus to whisk her away to nowhere. I wrap bare limbs around emptiness as I feign a contented sigh that will be lost to the damp musty air of this cold barren room. I surrender to sleep and catch reality off guard. With her on my mind I will sink ever deeper. She relates to fallen outsiders that tout flesh for chemicals whilst displaying openly wrecked lives. She forgets herself for one blissful moment and allows eyelids to drop in unison beneath a nuisance sky. The world seems far more attractive when obscured behind the rendering of black mascara shutters. She will miss the last bus, preferring instead to catch her death as December pulls short the day in frozen gasps. Leaden skies continue to assault the concrete horizon. She is at home in the midst of such cemented decadence. I am at home in the throws of unconscious release. All I ever wanted is all I will never know, for all I do know is manufactured love built on the foundations of my own furtive imaginings. Misguided and misjudged chemicals hold the keys to life altering smiles. She wonders, as do I, if such upturned lips are traceable on our sleep-frozen faces? Or are the welding of worries in to troubled brows more austere in the clutch of a nocturnal embrace? Together, alone, we will face tomorrow knowing less than we know now. I will meet you in the void that exists between hopes and dreams. I will hold you and ask nothing before requesting the world with a kiss. Lips that have caused these paralysed smiles can only sedate such aches. My psychological enquiries have led me here to you. Held within your own marbled limbs as smiles dance serenely over unwrapped lithium. You will take the lead in dreams as I, never far behind, follow closely in mine.